4/18/2011 @ 12:45PM

The Miraculous Dawn Of The European Union, 60 Years Ago Today

April 18, 2011, is the 60th anniversary of a day that changed world history. Sadly, it is unlikely to get the attention it richly deserves.

On that day in 1951, leaders of six European countries–Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany–signed the Treaty of Paris to create the European Coal and Steel Community, the forerunner of today’s European Union. The treaty was the beginning of a remarkable experiment that has resulted in Western European peace and prosperity for 60 years.

Looking back, what happened that day seems reasonable and completely logical. But at the time the treaty represented a huge leap of faith, for in 1951 Europe was hardly secure or prosperous. With the devastation of World Wars I and II still fresh in European minds, and the continent hardly brimming with confidence about the future, Washington signaled in 1950 that American energy and attention were switching from Europe to the Korean peninsula. That left a power vacuum in Europe, and a very real dread about what might happen next.

As U.S. attention waned, there was a feeling in Washington that a military presence needed to be established to discourage the Soviet Union from meddling in Europe, especially in the western part of the continent. But that sent a signal, nuanced if not entirely direct, that West Germany should rearm to face down the Soviet threat.

Many Europeans found that unsettling. Would history repeat itself once more? Would the fields and cities of Europe yet again serve as the marching ground for a reconstituted German Army? Nowhere was this fear more palpable than in France, a country not fully at ease with its own sad performance in World War II.

Would the border region of Alsace-Lorraine, with its rich seams of coal, again be fought over as European nations struggled to control a key commodity, coal to produce electricity, needed for a war-making machine? Likewise, who would dominate the region’s steel mills, especially in Luxembourg, which could provide a basic building block for mid-20th century military power?

In this time of fear and foreboding, two Frenchmen came together to develop the blueprint for modern Europe. Jean Monnet, a brandy merchant from Cognac, in southern France, and Robert Schuman, the French foreign minister, a lawyer from the disputed region near the French-West German border, worked together on the “Schuman Plan,” which Schuman proposed on May 9, 1950.

The cleverly designed concept called for European nations to consolidate their coal and steel industries into a supranational community to be governed by a high authority independent of any country’s government. That way all the participating countries would avoid the uncertainty of not knowing what their neighbors were doing in coal and steel.

Many said the idea couldn’t work. The United Kingdom opposed it from the outset, not wanting to surrender any sovereignty. The U.S., on the other hand, was intrigued by the idea and supported the notion of a more integrated and, it hoped, peaceful Western Europe.

As Schuman said on May 9, 1950, “Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.” Eleven months later–60 years ago today–representatives of the first six member states signed the treaty and made way for the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community.

Monnet served as president of the Community’s High Authority from 1952 to 1955. In 1955 he set forth on another pioneering project, the Action Committee for the United States of Europe, which he served as president from 1955 until his retirement in 1975. Before his death, in 1979, he told a close colleague, “We have done more than we ever could have hoped for.”

With the precedent of a supranational organization firmly set by the European Coal and Steel Community, Western Europe moved forward again in 1957 with the launch of the European Economic Community–the Common Market, as it came to be called. Subsequently in the early 1990s the European Union, which included the Coal and Steel and Economic Communities, was established in recognition that the modest goals of the 1950s were expanding to include issues such as police and judicial policy as well as foreign and security policy.

Today Europe faces many challenges, among them the euro’s stability and turmoil in neighboring North Africa and in the Middle East. Yet no one seriously contemplates a Europe in the grips of war. A continent whose soil is soaked with the blood of thousands of years of battle is now at peace. The European Union is hardly perfect, but no one is preparing for war or even thinking about it, thanks to the imagination and perseverance of visionaries such as Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman.

Don C. Smith is a lecturer and director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law & Policy program at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. He has just produced a documentary, Jean Monnet: Father of Europe, which is available here.